Kinematic bodies are special types of bodies that are meant to be user-controlled. They are not affected by physics at all; to other types of bodies, such as a character or a rigid body, these are the same as a static body. However, they have two main uses:

Simulated motion: When these bodies are moved manually, either from code or from an AnimationPlayer (with AnimationPlayer.playback_process_mode set to “physics”), the physics will automatically compute an estimate of their linear and angular velocity. This makes them very useful for moving platforms or other AnimationPlayer-controlled objects (like a door, a bridge that opens, etc).

Kinematic characters: KinematicBody also has an API for moving objects (the move_and_collide and move_and_slide methods) while performing collision tests. This makes them really useful to implement characters that collide against a world, but that don’t require advanced physics.

Moves the body along a vector. If the body collides with another, it will slide along the other body rather than stop immediately. If the other body is a KinematicBody or RigidBody, it will also be affected by the motion of the other body. You can use this to make moving or rotating platforms, or to make nodes push other nodes.

This method should be used in Node._physics_process (or in a method called by Node._physics_process), as it uses the physics step’s delta value automatically in calculations. Otherwise, the simulation will run at an incorrect speed.

linear_velocity is the velocity vector (typically meters per second). Unlike in move_and_collide, you should not multiply it by delta — the physics engine handles applying the velocity.

up_direction is the up direction, used to determine what is a wall and what is a floor or a ceiling. If set to the default value of Vector3(0,0,0), everything is considered a wall.

If stop_on_slope is true, body will not slide on slopes if you include gravity in linear_velocity.

If the body collides, it will change direction a maximum of max_slides times before it stops.

floor_max_angle is the maximum angle (in radians) where a slope is still considered a floor (or a ceiling), rather than a wall. The default value equals 45 degrees.

If infinite_inertia is true, body will be able to push RigidBody nodes, but it won’t also detect any collisions with them. If false, it will interact with RigidBody nodes like with StaticBody.

Returns the linear_velocity vector, rotated and/or scaled if a slide collision occurred. To get detailed information about collisions that occurred, use get_slide_collision.

Moves the body while keeping it attached to slopes. Similar to move_and_slide.

As long as the snap vector is in contact with the ground, the body will remain attached to the surface. This means you must disable snap in order to jump, for example. You can do this by setting snap to (0,0,0) or by using move_and_slide instead.

Checks for collisions without moving the body. Virtually sets the node’s position, scale and rotation to that of the given Transform, then tries to move the body along the vector rel_vec. Returns true if a collision would occur.